“What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now.” ~Author Unknown

“It is not easy to stay with your loneliness. The temptation is to nurse your pain or escape into fantasies about people who will take it away. But when you can acknowledge your loneliness in a safe, contained place, you make your pain available for God’s healing. God does not want your loneliness; God wants to touch you in a way that permanently fulfills your deepest need. It is important that you dare to stay with your pain and allow it to be there….Dare to stay with your pain, and trust God’s promise to you.” ~Henri Nouwen, from his book, The Inner Voice of Love

______________

Most of y’all who read this fluff know we moved from Iowa to South Carolina a year ago. In fact, it was August 10th of last year that we closed on our house here in SC. I have been feeling pretty…hmm, nostalgic, I guess is the word…this last week. It is strange.

Emma still stays in touch with her closest buddies from Iowa, and I do too, although I must say I do a pretty poor job of it. But I happened into her room yesterday as she was talking to her buds, Rachel and Aileen, who are sisters and two of her bestest Iowa friends. <I have noticed that Emma likes to talk on speaker with her “peeps”…in her room. I don’t know why this is.> I walked in and thought she was talking to one of her other Iowa people and so I hollered out “Hey Mer!!”. To which Emma replied, “Moooom, it’s Rachel and Aileen.” <Oh! My bad, apparently.> I proceeded to give them a shout out and then chat with them a bit…Emma didn’t seem to mind. At least she didn’t say so. But in those few moments, I realized just how much I miss those kids. I seriously was choked up. Their mom, Theresa, was one of my close friends, who I also miss a lot as well. Is it weird for me to miss my daughter’s friends? Even though she has met some nice kids here, something just isn’t the same.

For the last year, there has remained a mass of about 10 boxes in my front room right here next to my computer desk. Those last few boxes that I just couldn’t…er, wouldn’t…make myself get to. The thought of having to sort through junk and require hubby to sort through what was his was somehow so incredibly overwhelming. I would look at those boxes and they would stress me out. They would invoke all kinds of angst and self-loathing. I would aspire to conquer them by way of the “one box a day” theory and then images would flash through my mind of pulling stuff out of those boxes with no specific home for said stuff to live and….well, it just gave me a rash whenever I would think about it.

Now as I’m sitting in my newly box-free area, I am wishing I had done it a year ago. There are still some things I need to find a home for, but the calm that I feel in this much less cluttered space is huge. I wish I had taken a before picture so you could appreciate the difference…and now posting an after picture seems moot, so you’re not getting one. Just trust me when I say a major load has been lifted. Where the sudden motivation has come from, I do not know. I mean, there’s no company coming…which is what it usually takes for me to dig down deep and get into the “crisis cleaning mode”, as I like to call it…or as Hubby calls it “The GO Mode”. I’m not going to try to analyze it. I’m just glad. I have even hung a few pictures. My friend Lisa would be proud.

Go ME!

I hear you asking…why hasn’t she hung anything on the walls?? I have hesitated to hang things on the walls for a couple of reasons. The main one being that I hate (with an indescribable passion) my living room furniture and in the spirit of potentially getting new furniture, I hesitated to hang things because, what if the new furniture would require a new room arrangement? Then I’d have to rearrange wall hangings and then you’ve got those pesky holes in the walls and then, and then… I tend to feel that if I hang something, I am then “married” to it and it must remain. But I came to the realization that, sadly, there was no potentially new furniture on the horizon and so, let me just get moved in to this house already!

If I’m honest, I would have to say that even after a year, I don’t really feel “plugged in”. I love being here in terms of location (closeness to family and ocean) and I have made a couple of special new friends. But I really miss the connections we had made in Iowa and have, at times, felt quite lonely. Though my loneliness has been of my own making.

I recognize my tendency to retreat after a move…though somehow that awareness doesn’t necessarily prevent the retreat. Something inside me seems to just kick in to some kind of auto-pilot mode and I do the things I absolutely must at that moment. The rest…anything that requires any sort of emotional attachment or emotional output on my part…gets placed on the back burner for another time. Which is when, exactly?

I know, poor pitiful me, right? Sounds like I really need to get a life. Stop whining and get on with it, right? Well, maybe finally getting “moved in” will head me in the finally getting “plugged in” direction. I’m tired of living in a state of “putting life on the back burner” and just simply surviving.

With that in mind and as the new school year approaches, I am making New School Year’s Resolutions:

Move in and live life!

Hang some pictures, already! It’s okay if I have to move them later…there’s spackle for that.

4 responses to “One Year Later”

I didn\’t get the chance to read this earlier, but I am glad I got around to it now. As far as the pity party, it seems this is something you needed desperately to move on. We all deal with loss in different ways, and I know you didn\’t look at the moving part as a loss in the traditional sense of the word. I have just recently found out, the bestus friend in the whole wide world that I have ever had, will be going back to her homeland in Germany in 10 months. I know this is something she wants, and though it will kill me, I have to be happy for her. She has been my inspiration and has changed my life in ways no one has ever done. So, I push that horrible feeling aside that I am already prematurely feeling…that feeling of lose 10 months down the line. It seems a shame to waste time feeling this way, when she will still be with me in the months to come. I will have to make other connections that will keep me going, spread my branches farther out over some other yard…(smile). and besides, I already have permission to go and stay with her, she will show me around her country…how cool is that?
Maybe the boxes were you\’re way of saying, I don\’t want to let go quite yet…of my friends, my connections, my familiar places.
Evething in its time, and everything in it place!

We\’ve been in Oklahoma for over 3 years; we still have boxes that have yet to be unpacked. My adjustment phase seems to last forever. It\’s hard to get settled in a new place! Give yourself some credit…and then you can move in and live life. And hang pictures. And take pictures of the hanged pictures.

I\’m right there with ya, babe. I have moved and I love being closer to family, but I have in no way really started to become part of the community. In fact, I think I can say with certainty that I won\’t be doing that for at least another six months. I\’m so wrapped up in Charlie and his eight million therapies and my up-coming trip to Montreal that I just don\’t have the time. Mabye I\’ll make a New Year\’s resolution.